StarCraft II

For the first time in GSL history, the finals are going to be a Protoss vs Protoss. A year ago this would have probably meant a very short games that would be seemingly decided more by luck than the actual skill by the players.

But fortunately the first Protoss versus Protoss finals is happening now, in a time where the match up has evolved into a plethora of different strategies and subtle moves that players can do to gain little advantages. We even had some PvP comebacks in this GSL tournament.

Not only has the match up evolved to a point that we can actually look forward to an exciting finals, it is also the players who qualified, which will make for intense games.

There is no question about it, SK MC has been on top of his game lately. Not only managing to qualify for the GSL finals, which is the most difficult tournament there is. He had an insane travel schedule. In this month alone he managed to win his Round of 8 match against Taeja (the winner of the last MLG Summer Arena), took third place at HomeStory Cup V (beating top competition from around the world) and took third at NASL beating his arch nemesis at foreign events Puma 3:0.

If that list is not impressive enough the names he knocked out of GSL sure is. In Ro16 he came out of the Group of death by beating MarineKing 2:0 and then knocking out Squirtle with a 2:1 score and finishing first in his group shaking up a lot of people´s predictions. After beating the before mentioned Taeja he went on to completely dismantle DRG in his Round of 4 Match going 3:0 and securing his seat in the final.

MC is known to heavily rely on his micro and choosing strategies that rely on execution, like his staple stargate builds which are very fragile in competitive play. This coupled with the incredible ability of MC to exactly know when he could go all in and kill the opponent gave him the reputation of being a very cheesy all in player that only does 2 or even 1 base allins every game. But as of this season we can see that he has developed as a player that can still rely on his execution but embedding this into an overall macro oriented style. The best example for this is the Round of 4 Game MC played against DRG, which you can check out here

In PvP though MC seems to turn up his level of control to 11. Thinking back to the ridicoulus Game 2 against Squirtle, which you can check out here , in which MC seems to hold on against all odds through sheer micro and willpower.

If SK MC is the ice cold surgeon Protoss striking with the utmost precision, then Seed is the internal medicine Protoss, carefully analyzing the situation, pending every detail and making very deliberate moves at a time. In contrast to MC he is not known to "out muscle" the other player with sheer micro or mechanics. Seed is known for out thinking the opponent by having carefully planned out builds, most of which are highly uncommon, designed to catch the opponent off guard.

One example of this is game 3 he played against violet in the Round of 16, in which he went for an 11 gate timing push of 3Bases with Blink.

The other quality he brings to the finals is endurance. In his round of 8 set against the extremely talented up and coming zerg player Symbol he went 0:2 before coming back to win 3 games in a row to take the series 3:2.

In the Round of 4 the set also went all the way to game 5 after some really stressful games, which you can read in more detail about here. And still in game 5 Seed showed incredible patience, by playing safe and not getting overeager.
This shows that Seed has an incredible amount of self control, which is very important especially against a player like MC, whose well microed Units can put a player on the edge very easily.

This clash of two totally different styles will make for an intense final as we will find out, if SK MC can get his third GSL title putting him alongside Nestea and MVP, or if Seed is able to win his first major title and establish himself as one of the great protoss players in Korea.

Writers prediction:
Because of the wildly different style and especially Seeds tendency to play non standard games it´s very hard to call a winner. It will all come down to if Seed can whether the storm, that is MC´s micro and if he can successfully employ some of his famous strategic decisions.

In the end I feel MC will probably be able to deal with whatever Seed can come up with and take home his third GSL title.

Don't miss this finals, it's sure to be an amazing final. You'll catch the action at 12:20pm CET over at GomTv.